


The Red Ink Incident™

by alcego, coralreefskim



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura learns what fuck means, Coran is my fave, Explosions, Fountains of Ink, From Shitpost to Drabble, Keith loses his mullet, Lance is flustered, Molecular Ink to Holographic Display and Transfer model XB001 (MIHDT), Shiro is Tired, i love my machines ok, there are regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcego/pseuds/alcego, https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralreefskim/pseuds/coralreefskim
Summary: After Keith faces losses with the Red Lion, things become even more complicated.(Despite the fact that the Alteans were the ones in the lead of the creation of the very beasts they were piloting in order to save the entire universe, but sure. Keith isn't salty. Not one bit, no.)It turns out space paperwork is just as complicated as Earth paperwork... and that the Altean's super advanced technology isn't quite as advanced as one would think.





	The Red Ink Incident™

**Author's Note:**

> aka [this post got out of hand and turned into a mini fic](https://the-universalfiction.tumblr.com/post/165788215994/its-not-a-mullet-anymore-bonus)

“What do you mean, REDO?”

Shiro sighed as he massaged his temples, Allura beside him and completely ignoring the now broken door of the control room. “Hello, Keith. Nice to see you too. I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

Keith completely ignored Shiro, making his way towards the princess and waving a piece of paper that had a yellow sticky note stuck on it. “What is this,” Keith hissed at a blank faced Allura, “What in the actual FUCK is this.”

Shiro turned to Keith, furrowed eyebrows warning Keith, “language.”

“Question,” Allura said, attracting attention of the two boys. She quirked an eyebrow with a sour expression. “What the quiznak is a ‘fuck’?”

Shiro sighed. Why was nothing ever easy? “It’s not important,” he assured Allura before turning back to Keith. 

Keith, who had paled dramatically. Distantly Shiro realized that Keith was torn between explaining what a fuck was and continuing to raise hell. Well, if all he needed was a little push…

“But it’s basically the human equivalent of ‘quiznak’.” If that could delay the storm, it would be a better day. 

“Oh!” Allura said brightly. “I see. Now, Keith, what was your confusion about?”

Right. Because nothing was ever easy. 

Keith’s face looked like a murder. “This is red lion erasure!” he yelled, waving the paper around. Shiro thought he recognized the angrily scrawled writing, and took note of the beautiful script on a sticky note. Even more importantly, he noticed that Keith had written in red ink. Oh no.

“What?” Allura said easily, but her face turned dark. Keith barreled on, heedless of the danger.

“Discrimination at its finest! I’ve got the red lion, so I should be allowed to write in red ink!”

For a moment Allura seemed to consider his point. Then she sniffed haughtily. “I suppose you believe Hunk should be allowed to write in _yellow_ ink then?”

“Yeah!” Keith shouted, and then stopped. Shiro watched as he realized what that would mean. “I mean, no?” he amended, though it sounded more like a question than anything.

“And I am sure our copiers would be so easy to adjust in such a way that they would be able to properly pick up red and yellow ink, am I wrong?”

“I-I don’t know.”

Allura hummed. Shiro wanted to leave the room, but he was curious to see how Keith was holding up, and peeked over Allura’s shoulder.

His face was stony, but not in the angry way. He seemed… almost pensive, as if he was thinking of something.

And then, without any warning, Keith turned to leave the room. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Allura asked.

“To find Pidge!” Keith replied, shouting her name as he continued down the hall.

“He’s actually going to do it,” Shiro said in awe. “He’s actually going to see if Pidge can make the copiers pick up red and yellow ink.”

\- - -

“No,” Pidge said immediately.

Keith’s eye twitched, but he inhaled a deep breath to calm himself. Patience yields focus, as Shiro always said. Even though Shiro inherently betrayed him just now, but still.

“Why,” Keith said, words tense and stilted, “not.”

Pidge snorted. “Wow, you sound as bad as me when I’m whining at Matt for something. Seriously though,” she shook her head, “copier machines have… a really complicated process. I haven’t bothered looking for other ways to alter it, because they,” she looked up at Keith, narrowing her eyes at him, “work perfectly fine.”

“Obviously not!” Keith said hotly. “They don’t pick up on red _or_ yellow ink!”

Pidge narrowed her eyes and took in Keith’s distinct lack of mullet. What was this really about?

“What color did you use to fill out the injury report?” she asked, turning back to the video feed sitting paused on her laptop. 

She heard fabric brush together and sighed. Why’d he have to be so emo about everything?

“Red,” he said sullenly. 

“Of course,” she muttered crossly. “Look, dude, if it’s really that important to you I can look into how the Altean copiers work a little more in depth, but I really don’t want to. Are you _sure_ that’s what this is about?”

She watched as Keith pursed his lips and looked at the floor. “Yes,” he said unconvincingly, brow furrowed. 

Pidge sighed. “Go bother someone else. If I’m gonna do this then I don’t want _you_ hovering over me.”

Keith snorted, but he turned to walk away. Well, if he was going to be so compliant… maybe she’d look into it in an hour or so.

She went back to her work.

\- - -

“Bet you’re regretting the mullet now, huh mullet?”

Keith sighed. This had been a bad idea. Sure, maybe Lance had been there to offer emotional support when he’d had to literally saw off his hair early in the day, but he was Lance for crying out loud. He was always Lanceing around things and being difficult for no reason other than to be difficult.

“I’ll show you regret,” he snarled, but Lance’s smug grin didn’t falter.

“Oh yeah, yeah, whatever mul–” Lance stopped, frowning. “Wait.”

Keith raised an eyebrow at him. “Wait what?”

Lance opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it close, frowning. “Nothing,” he said finally, “Nothing your mul–” He stopped again, now scowling like he just ate something bad.

“Nothing my what,” Keith deadpanned.

“Nothing!” Lance exclaimed hotly, throwing his hands in the air for a dramatic flair. “Nothing at all.” He cleared his throat, glancing away with a hand to his hip. “Anyway, copier machine? I don’t see why it’s necessary.”

Keith scoffed. “Not for you, maybe, but it’s necessary–”

“For you and solely you,” Lance butted in.

“–to distinguish the team easily,” Keith finished, glaring at Lance.

“I didn’t know we had to be color coded.” His eyes lit up. “Oh oh oh, can I be purple? I love purple.”

“No!” Keith snapped, “purple is for Galra–” Pause. “Uh.”

Lance smirked. “You see my point now.”

Keith huffed. “Whatever, I’ll ask Hunk.”

“Do what you want, mullet,” Lance said crossly, returning to buffing Blue and showering her with sweet nothings that sounded an awful lot like, “How’re you doing my beautiful space goober kitty?” 

Keith pretended he hadn’t heard anything.

Hunk was situated in the castleship’s work room, tinkering with some metal bits on his work table and muttering under his breath. Keith watched him for a few minutes, enjoying the methodical way Hunk maneuvered small metal parts with his very large hands.

A few minutes after Keith had finished admiring his arms, Hunk spoke up. “What d’you want?”

Keith startled, but he took a moment to choose his words. “Everyone else kicked me out.”

“Huh,” Hunk remarked, “normally that’d be Lance.”

“Well right now it’s not,” Keith said defensively, crossing his arms and frowning.

Hunk laughed easily and set down his tools, raising his hands in a “take it easy” sort of gesture. “Yeah man, I can see that. What’s up? Why’s everyone done with you today? C’mon man, give me all the juicy details!” Hunk propped himself up on the work table with his elbows, looking at Keith with wide eyes.

Keith pretended that some of those words hadn’t slammed against his protective walls and shrugged. “Allura made me fill out an injury report after, y’know,” he gestured vaguely at his hair, which was lacking the comforting weight of what Lance called a “mullet”. “And then she got mad at me and tried to make me re-do it because I used _red_ ink-”

“Wait, you filled out an _official report_ with _red ink_? Dude what were you _thinking_? The copier will never pick up on that!”

“Which Allura told me!” Keith snapped, frustrated that he couldn’t even tell his story without being interrupted. “So I asked Pidge if she could work on the copier to make it pick up on red ink and she said maybe and made me leave, and then Lance was just being a _jerk_ as usual and he kept calling me a mullet even though I don’t even _have_ a mullet anymore so now I’m here! With you,” he finished awkwardly, folding his arms over his chest and appreciating their comforting weight. 

Hunk stared at him for a second. “Well that is a lot of information. And I do mean a lot! But… I mean if you want some help fixing your hair I could-”

“I don’t want help with my _hair_ ,” Keith exclaimed, throwing his hands up into the air. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, really, but that wasn’t it. He’d never really cared about his hair, but now that a significant portion of it had gone missing he’d really rather not change it any more. “Gah! I’ll just go see if Pidge got anything figured out.”

\- - -

Pidge did not get anything figured out.

(Instead, she gave him a look that said, ‘I wonder why I’m friends with you– oh wait, it’s because we’re literally stuck together’, and said literally that out loud. Which Keith, of course, did not appreciate.)

He stalked back to his room, hand still fisting the blasted paper. The corridors echoed with his admittedly loud stomping, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, not even if another mind control thing invaded the castle again.

He glanced down at the paper, at the aggressive red and the graceful purple. “I will avenge you, Red,” he whispered, “I won’t stand for this red lion erasure. This is beyond tomfoolery.”

“I heard you’ve got yourself in quite a pickle there.”

Keith turned, muscles tense at the sudden voice, but he relaxed when it was someone familiar. “Oh, Coran. Didn’t uh, see you there.”

Coran waved away at the statement. “Yes, yes, it’s fine.” He walked closer to Keith, and, after glancing left and right like he was checking if someone was listening in on their conversation, leaned in towards Keith and whispered, “say, I heard you needed some help with the copier?”

Keith blinked. “Uh, yea.”

Coran stood up straight, displaying a set of brilliant white teeth. “Righto-then! Follow me.”

Keith blinked, but did as he was asked. It was usually easier to just do what Coran asked.

Coran led him down the hallway into an obscure part of the castleship that Keith was, frankly, unfamiliar with. That wasn’t saying much, though; he hadn’t explored much of the ship.

“-and of course the spectral generators are always complicating things and trying to shine light onto the object it’s copying which is simply no good for paper copies at all, but this doesn’t do that at all! A major advance in technology. No idea why it didn’t become more mainstream,” Coran said, pulling at his moustache as he led Keith to what looked to be a room full of junk. 

“This is a room full of junk,” Keith said succinctly. 

Coran tutted enthusiastically. “Oh no, my boy. That’s where you’re wrong! This right here-” he gestured to a machine that looked suspiciously like a printer that had been banned from the Olympics, “-is a Molecular Ink to Holographic Display and Transfer model XB001, and is, I think, exactly what you’re looking for.”

Keith looked at him blankly. What did that even mean?

“In other words,” Coran said, catching onto Keith’s confusion while remaining completely unbothered by it, “this will make a second paper copy of your report while uploading the data on it to the castleship’s mainframe.”

Oh. Well that made a lot more sense. Why he hadn’t just said that the first time was beyond Keith. “Let’s try it, then.”

And try it they did. The MIHDT clunked to life. Keith wasn’t sure that it was supposed to clunk, but Coran assured him that it was totally normal. This was not comforting in the slightest, and Keith was reminded again that the MIHDT was currently sitting in a room with a shattered drone from the training room and what looked suspiciously like a Roomba with a knife taped to it. 

Keith made a mental note to rescue the Roomba later.

The MIHDT complained loudly as Coran fed it the report, and Keith shifted uneasily. He noted the fine beads of sweat forming on Coran’s forehead and swallowed thickly. 

It all happened so fast. The MIHDT groaned loudly, the sound deafening in such a small space, and the paper in its gaping maw shivered just before it was consumed whole. For almost a full second the room was tense with a quiet that was about as relaxed as Pidge when she encountered a new robot, and then everything exploded with sound.

Keith ducked his head away, trying to cover his ears against the horrible _shhhhrkaaa!_ sound of the MIHDT exploding and sending ink everywhere. And when Keith said everywhere, he really did mean _everywhere_. Nothing had escaped unscathed, and, considering how the MIHDT was now spewing a fountain of ink ( _Red ink,_ Keith’s head noted unhelpfully) it seemed doubtful that anything would escape the effects of the machine’s death throes.

“Uh- should we, maybe, do something about that?” Keith asked, staring at the ink as it pooled around his feet and stained the Roomba and its knife a dangerous shade of red. 

Coran wiped ink away from his eyes, looking for all his worth like a disgruntled, moustached, multi-colored space racoon. For a moment his pupils seemed to grow, reminding Keith that he was truly an alien, and that he knew relatively little about the man standing next to him. 

There was something deeply unsettling about seeing Coran frown. “We’ll give it a few ticks to cool down,” Coran said simply, “then we’ll return with cleaning supplies to clean this up.”

He’d expected as much, but still. Keith sighed. He’d been sighing a lot today. Was he turning into Shiro? “Sounds about right,” he muttered, reflecting on the utter clusterfuck that had been his day.

“No need to feel down, my boy!” Coran said cheerfully. “Nobody else was here, so if you just run along and get yourself showered it’ll be like nothing happened!”

A soft smile found its way to Keith’s face, and he didn’t fight it. “Thanks Cora-”

“What the fuck,” Allura said. 

Both Keith and Coran froze, and turned to the doorway to see Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, and Allura standing in full armor, clearly having rushed in believing an attack to have taken place. Oh no- that explosion must’ve been louder than he’d thought. Oh, this was bad.

“Don’t say fuck,” Shiro reprimanded, but his heart wasn’t in it. He had chosen to stare at Coran incredulously instead of Keith, presumably because he could believe with relative ease that Keith had been involved in something like this. “Coran,” Shiro said, but it sounded rather more like a squawk. 

“Man, how’d you manage that?” Lance asked, pointing to the fountain of red ink. 

Pidge adjusted her glasses and took a step away from the ever-growing puddle of red, red ink. “Misguided science practices from the looks of it.”

Hunk clearly didn’t share her reservations, however, and rushed in closer to investigate the rather deceased MIHDT. “How d’you think it works?” he asked, voice shining with awe. 

Coran opened his mouth, presumably to provide a thorough analysis of the machine’s inner workings, but Allura cut him off before he could start. 

“What,” she paused to take a steadying breath, and the others quickly shifted to listen to their commander. “What happened here, exactly?”

“Well we were-” Coran started, ever ready to recount a story, but Allura held up a hand.

“No. I want Keith to tell us.”

“Uh,” Keith stared at her for a moment, then at the puddle of ink. There really wasn’t a point in lying about this, was there? “I was trying to find a way to copy red ink.”

Allura sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just make sure it gets cleaned up,” she said, already turning to leave. It was a lot to take in.

The others groaned, but the frown Shiro aimed at Coran and Keith was full of disappointment. “I expect you both to have this cleaned by the end of the week.” 

And that was the end of it.

\- - -

A few months went by without any more explosions of ink. Pidge had begun looking into modifications for the copier that would allow it to pick up more tones of ink when copying in black and white, and in the meantime Keith had begun using black ink to fill out reports. 

Once an alien remarked on their paperwork, noting that the colors were rather repetitive and boring. “Why do you not use red ink?” they had asked innocently. 

There was a collective groan. Someone muttered, “Because of the Red Ink Incident,” bitterly, only to receive a jab in the ribs by another someone accompanied by the harried hiss of, “We do _not_ speak of that!” 

It wasn’t mentioned again.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe the MIHDT vored the report.
> 
>  
> 
> We have tumblrs!  
>  [coralreefskim's tumblr](https://coralreefskim.tumblr.com)  
>  [archaicsextoy's tumblr](https://alcego.tumblr.com)


End file.
